The Conservatives after 1979 - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 95

confined to capital spending only (thus removing this element of national funding for
the increased subsidy being paid to local bus services). On highway expenditure capital
funding was also restricted to 'roads of more than local significance'. The discretion
available to local authorities to determine their own mix of spending (a deliberate
feature of the 1970s transport funding regime) was thereby eliminated. After the
1983 General Election the Government published a White Paper (DOE 1983) which
proposed the ultimate solution of abolishing the GLC and the MCCs altogether. The
arguments about the need for strategic planning which had prompted the setting up of
the metropolitan counties only a decade earlier were dismissed as a 'passing fashion'.
Even before the proposals for abolition were translated into law the Government
initiated a separate Act taking over immediate policy control of London Transport (LT)
from the GLC. It then embarked on a policy of reducing subsidies by a combination
of increased fares and savings in bus operating costs. London Transport Buses was
reorganised into a number of subsidiary companies based on groupings of garages in
different parts of the capital. A franchising system was progressively introduced for
the licence to operate individual routes. LT subsidiaries (and other companies from
outside the capital) competed for these franchises. In 1993 the LT bus companies were
sold, but the franchising system retained.
The abolition of the GLC created a void as far as London-wide planning and co-
ordination was concerned. To improve both the appearance and substance of overall
co-ordination a separate Minister for London and a Cabinet sub-committee on the
subject were created after the 1992 general election, but the Labour Party continued
to campaign for the re-creation of a London-wide Authority.
In the other conurbations the Government was prepared to see most of the MCCs'
former functions delegated to the 'lower tier' district or borough councils and did not
take on any of the strategic functions itself. Somewhat surprisingly the conurbation-
wide Passenger Transport Authorities were retained, although these reverted to their
previous form of a Joint Board of representatives from the constituent local councils.
Hence, whilst passenger transport planning continued to be undertaken for the
whole conurbation, development planning, highways and traffic management were
administered by the individual metropolitan councils.
6.4 Bus deregulation
Outside London the abolition of the metropolitan county councils coincided with
radical change in the provision of local bus services. Under the 1980 Transport Act
there had been a limited number of experiments in rural areas to test the effect of
withdrawing the system of monopoly licensing on individual bus routes. However
these were no guide to the potential effects of wholesale deregulation of bus services
which the Government proposed (DTp 1984) . There was no real evidence in Britain
or elsewhere to go on and in this situation the authors of the White Paper had to rely
on a mix of ideological assertion and academic theory.
Arguments centred on whether there was a 'contestable market' for bus service
provision - i.e. whether, if the constraints of regulation were removed, the incumbent
operators of routes would find themselves subject to competition. (If not, the intended
benefits would not arise and the travelling public would be vulnerable to monopoly
exploitation.) Particularly in the larger towns and cities it was also questioned whether,
without public control, insufficient co-ordination of services, fares and ticketing would
be achieved. On these the White Paper argued that: